HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you enter them into the search window. If a compound term doesn’t appear in the drop-down list, try entering the term into the search window and then hit the search button (instead of the “enter” key). Alternatively, begin searches for compound terms with a quotation mark.

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. The Panelists are surveyed annually to gauge the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

Usage Note: The adjective perfect is often considered an absolute term like chief and prime; some maintain that it therefore cannot be modified by more, quite, relatively, and other qualifiers of degree. But the qualification of perfect has many reputable precedents (most notably in the preamble to the US Constitution in the phrase “in order to form a more perfect Union”). When perfect means “ideal for a purpose,” as in There could be no more perfect spot for the picnic, modification by degree is considered acceptable; in fact 74 percent of the Usage Panel approved this example in our 2004 survey. See Usage Notes at absolute,equal,unique.